COLUMN: Hattiesburg's Vance familiar with adversity

Mar. 26, 2013

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Hattiesburg High hired Tony Vance to be its head football coach in late January.

Vance, who had deep roots at Charleston High and in the Charleston community, and the school decided he would start at Hattiesburg on Feb. 11 – bright and early Monday morning.

The 37-year-old Vance was all set to make the 230-mile (give or take) trek to the Hub City the day before he was set to over at Hattiesburg High.

However, as most of us remember all too well, Mother Nature and her EF4 tornado made kind of a mess of things on Sunday, Feb. 10. So Vance drove down on Monday instead.

“Heckuva way to come in, huh,” Vance recently asked rhetorically, with a laugh.

As if uprooting yourself from the place you’d called home for almost all your life wasn’t enough of a shock to the system, Vance now had all this other to deal with.

“I had a truckload of football stuff, stuff to put in my office,” he said. “I still haven’t put any of it in my office yet.”

The amount of damage the athletic facilities at Hattiesburg High received has been well documented. Baseball games won’t be held at Smokie Harrington Park at all this season, and the school is basically having to start over from the ground up at Watkins Gymnasium.

Stadium issues

On the football side of things, D.I. Patrick Stadium may not have borne as much of the brunt from an athletic facilities standpoint, but there are problems that have to be addressed. For instance, the turf is having to be completely redone since the playing surface was compromised as a result of the tornado.

There are also a few cosmetic issues that will have to addressed, such as the fence that surrounds the stadium.

Vance is also still in the process of filling out his coaching staff, which he said he has yet to complete. One assistant that won’t be back is Terry Underwood, who was the offensive coordinator and offensive line coach for the Tigers last season. He will be the offensive line coach at Gulfport next season.

Personal pain

But if there’s one thing Vance knows, it’s how to handle adversity.

When he was 11 years old, his mother, Dorothy, began kidney dialysis as a result of high blood pressure. For 10 years, Vance watched her struggle. So in 1996, when he was 21, he donated a kidney to his mother in an effort to ease her pain and suffering.

The operation was performed in November 1996, and Dorothy died on July 29, 1997.

“It’s like they say, ‘If it don’t kill you, it can only make you stronger,’” he said Tuesday. “The tornado misplaced us, but we’re bound and determined to keep it from holding us back.”